We all know how easy it is to get wrapped up in looking at trends in the US and forget about what might be happening in the rest of the world. Lucky for us, the rest of the world occasionally talks about what they`re doing, and we can use the magic of modern communications to find out too.

The European Union recently released more statistics than you can shake a stick at on the status of women in the sciences in member countries. For this data geek, the most interesting part was “Setting the scientific agenda.”

What did I learn? For one thing, it turns out that in nine of the 26 countries included, women researchers had higher success rates than did men; okay, this means they have lower success rates in the other 17 countries but, hey, nine`s a start.

In a surprising tidbit, I also discovered that Hungary, Estonia and Slovenia had the most equitable rates of funding. Who knew?